HellWish

By Stephen Schrum

"Be careful what you wish for," they say—and be even more careful if Hell is listening in....

In a small town, a comatose patient is believed to be a conduit to the afterlife. When someone visits her, talks to her, and makes some kind of wish or prayer, the wish comes true. Word gets out and people start lining up with cash in hand to make their wishes—until things start to go awry as Hell begins to pave its way to the town with a portal and an occupying demon force. Who can stop them? Martin Lightborn, demon hunter. He left the priesthood after he was ordained, but he never left the service of God.

HellWish is a graphic novel that serves as a proof-of-concept for using Second Life, a 3D virtual world, as an environment for creating a work of this nature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Schrum
• Release date: Jun 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310556333

Stephen Schrum

Stephen A. Schrum, PhD, is a theatre director, performance poet, playwright, novelist, graphic novelist, virtual worlds theatre director, and Steampunk maker. Notable past RL (real life) productions include: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (set in 1995) and Macbeth (performed in a cyberpunk style); Moliere’s The Miser (done in period costume) and The Misanthrope (set in the era of Disco); Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis (utilizing both the Japanese dance-drama form Butoh and hallucinatory soundscapes that Schrum created). With the research area of “The Perception of Presence in Virtual Performance,” he has directed virtual productions of The Bacchae and Prometheus Bound in Second Life (SL). He began teaching with technology in 1993, and since then has been writing and presenting on the topic, including editing the book, Theatre in Cyberspace: Issues of Teaching, Acting and Directing (2000). More recently he has turned his attention to Transhumanism, with a side-detour into Steampunk. Stephen is also interested digital filmmaking; check out his work on his youtube channel.

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